SHAKSPEARE'S DRAMATIC ART. . BOOK I. SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA DOWN TO THE TIME OF SHAKSPEARE. CHAPTER I. THE MYSTERIES, OR MIRACLE PLAYS. ALL art is in its origin connected with religion. Strange as this may sound, in regard to the structure and position of the modern drama, still it is no less certain that the Church was also its birth-place. This has been disputed by referring to the earlier dramatic attempts of the Christian era, to Ezechiel's 'Life of Moses,' to the Xpuròs TáσXWV (which is said to have been written in the fourth century, by Gregory of Nazianzus, but probably belonged to a more recent date), to the 'Querolus' of Ausonius and his Ludus septem sapientium,' to the 'Ocipus,' an allegorical comedy, to the Judicium Vulcani' and others, from the sixth to the ninth century, and lastly to the dramas of the well-known Hroswitha, a nun of Gandersheim (about the year 980), which are tales in dialogue written in Latin prose, and, as she herself says, imitations of Terence. However, certain as it is that these most ancient examples of dramatising a freely chosen subject have nothing to do with either religion or the Church, but are directly connected with the theatrical representations and the dramatic compositions of the ancients, as certain is it that they have little or nothing to do with the origin of the B |